


Barking

by jellybeany



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amortentia, Humor, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Pranks and Practical Jokes, custard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26192998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeany/pseuds/jellybeany
Summary: He felt something for Sirius, something very strong, but Remus didn’t think it was love. It wasn’t soft and gentle, more like sharp and piercing. It was usually anxiety, since Sirius was reckless and fearless and inordinately prone to jumping off high ledges.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 18
Kudos: 122





	Barking

“Now that I have you all here, men, I’m holding an Emergency Marauder Meeting,” said James Potter from on top of his soapbox (a stolen Honeydukes crate) in the middle of the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory. “Highly Critical. Top Secret. Confidential. Clandestine, if you will.”

“We’re not all here, actually,” said Remus, who was standing in front of his bed folding socks. “Pete’s not here.”

“Mfaffergoith,” said Sirius. He was lounging on his bed, a picture of idleness, trying to fit as many cauldron cakes in his mouth as was humanly possible. It was rather like watching a python devouring a cow.

“Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him all week.”

“Pappermoith!” Sirius tried again. They ignored him.

“Who cares about Pete?” James shouted, throwing his arms up. “Anyway—“

“I said, _spattergroit,_ ” Sirius said, spitting out a chunk of cake and spraying crumbs everywhere. “He’s gone home. Probably faking it just to bunk off, the rat.”

“Oh,” said James. “Well, whatever. The point is, we only have one week left until Christmas break.” He slapped his hand into his palm for emphasis.

“And?” Remus asked, not really listening. He had been trying to put his socks away for the last half hour but couldn’t seem to find a single matching pair. He’d pick them up and realise one was much longer than the other, or one was far too small, and put them down again. There was a veritable menagerie of socks lying on his bed.

“And, we don’t have a prank planned! These are dark times, we need to keep morale up around here. We need to pull off something big. Mayhem. A caper. I’m thinking… I’m thinking fireworks, I’m thinking custard, I’m thinking underwear.”

“You’re always thinking about underwear,” Sirius butted in.

“At least I wear underwear,” he shot back.

Remus had to take a minute to recover from the implications of that statement, and when he came back to earth he saw that half of the socks he had been folding had changed colour. A quarter of an hour later, James was still wittering on about necessary supplies and blueprints and custard powder, when Sirius shouted.

“You told Evans?!”

“She’s my _girlfriend_ ,” James insisted, “I can’t just not tell her about our prank ideas.”

“She’s not a marauder! Of course you don’t have to tell her, you berk!”

Remus liked Lily, and talked with her often enough that they might even be classed as friends, but so far Sirius hadn’t taken to her. Remus thought that odd, since they were so similar — stubborn, proud, and magically gifted enough that they each had the tendency to develop a big head. And James was head over heels for both of them.

“Too late now, she already knows. So, we’re doing it this Saturday — you in, Moony?”

“What?” Remus looked up. And then down, since James had moved from the soapbox on to the floor, where he was sitting cross-legged among rolls of parchment and dungbombs, ticking things off a long list with a peacock feather quill. “No, thank you. McGonagall would flay me alive.”

“Hey, Minnie wouldn’t do that. She would just look at you all disappointed, like.”

“That’s worse,” Remus pointed out. “I can’t risk losing my prefectship over this.” _My Charms grades are bad enough._

“How about this,” James offered. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. We get on with our business, and you don’t report us to Minnie. Deal?”

“Fine. But stop calling her Minnie, it’s disgusting.” He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. He almost didn’t catch it, but Sirius hadn’t put his wand away fast enough. “What the—? Have you been messing with my socks all this time?!”

Sirius smiled blandly in an attempt to look innocent. Remus threw a sock at him. Then another, and another, and then threw the pillow and his bedside lamp.

“No wonder they kept turning orange. You absolute tosser, Pads.”

Sirius laughed beatifically and deflected them all, spelling them into bluebirds that flew around the circular room, tweeting and singing.

“You love me really!”

_Maybe so._

* * *

He felt something for Sirius, something very strong, but Remus didn’t think it was love. It wasn’t soft and gentle, more like sharp and piercing. It was usually anxiety, since Sirius was reckless and fearless and inordinately prone to jumping off high ledges.

Today it was irritation.

They were sitting in Herbology, and Remus was sitting alone, because he usually partnered with Peter. It was no great loss, since Peter hardly did any work anyway. He was too busy trying to get into Cressida Winchcombe’s knickers, and she was so out of Peter’s league it wasn’t funny.

But without Peter’s nauseating flirting, he could hear all that was going on at the bench behind him, where his two friends were ineptly repotting Hellebore.

“Darling?” Sirius called, loudly.

“Yes, dear?” James replied, loudly, from right next to him. A few Hufflepuffs giggled.

“Have you seen my trowel anywhere?”

“Here you are, sweetums.”

“Thank you, dearest.”

This routine used to be funny, but lately it made Remus want to throttle them.

“Will you two give it a rest?” He hissed, and they both looked at him oddly. Five minutes later, Sirius came and sat next to him.

“Alright? Need some help?”

“You think I’m so stupid I can’t repot a plant by myself?” he snapped.

“No, I— Jesus, Moony, I only meant you don’t have a partner!”

“I’m fine. You go and be with James, and I’ll be fine by myself.”

Sirius didn’t move.

“Pads, I’ll partner with you when I want my ears blown off in a freak accident.”

“I never blow things up by accident, Moony,” he said, putting an arm around Remus’ shoulders. “I only ever do it on purpose.”

* * *

On Tuesday, it was exasperation.

They were all sitting in the library, except a while ago James and Lily had left to search for a book in the stacks together, which was a flimsy excuse if ever there was one. It wasn’t often that you could see Sirius in the library, but he’d decided to pull his socks up before the end of term.

That was what he told Remus as they went in, but as soon as he sat down he seemed to find any excuse to avoid working.

“Can’t we get McKinnon to lend us her notes?” Sirius whispered plaintively, hunched over a star chart that covered half the table.

“Not after the incident with the bubotuber pus.”

“Psh. Her toad survived, didn’t it? We rescued it.”

“Yes, but it was… rather smooth. And we had stolen it in the first place. Shut up, I have to finish this essay.”

Sirius did shut up for a few minutes, but the result was he started jiggling his leg again, up and down, up and down, like he was a living distraction with only one purpose: to be annoying.

Remus put his hand on Sirius’ thigh to force it to be still. This stopped the jiggling, with only the slight hindrance of having to do his homework one handed. Whenever he removed his hand, Sirius’ leg inevitably started bouncing again, so he thought the best thing to do was keep it there.

“What’s Jamie doing?” Sirius asked loudly, abandoning his Astrology homework and looking around the room. Remus spotted Pince stalking around nearby, so he leaned in close and murmured quietly in Sirius’ ear.

“I dread to think.”

 _Speak of the devil_ , he thought, as James appeared from between the stacks a minute later. His hair looked windswept (but that was normal) and his uniform looked rumpled and scruffy (but that was also normal). It would have been hard to tell what he had been up to, if Lily hadn’t twirled off looking pink in the face and utterly pleased with herself.

James pulled back a chair noisily and grinned at them. Remus took his hand back from under the desk and Sirius jumped a little.

“Alright? Why’ve you got ants in your pants?” James asked. He looked between them both and his face fell. “I thought we got rid of the ants! Pads, tell me we got rid of the ants!”

Sirius shrugged.

“Boiling water is how you get rid of ants,” Remus offered. “Cruel, but effective.”

James and Sirius hummed.

“Well, our method was effective.”

“Your method? What was that, leaving a honey cake in the middle of the room as bait and then trapping them?”

“…How did you know?”

Remus shook his head, exasperated.

* * *

On Wednesday, it started out as fascination.

Remus stepped through the portrait hole, and was immediately met with the noise of James and Sirius having one of their stupid arguments. It was practically entertainment in the Gryffindor common room. There were spectators.

James and Sirius had been spending a lot of time together recently. _And that’s fine_ , Remus reminded himself. They were obviously planning some hijinks or other, and Remus had said he didn’t want to know about it. Unfortunately, that meant that a few times conversations stopped as soon as he came in to the room. It gave him the uneasy feeling that they were talking about him behind his back.

This time, their conversation didn’t stop as he entered the common room, which was both a blessing and a curse. They were sitting on opposite sofas yelling random sounds at each other. The level of inanity really was fascinating.

“Boba!” (That was James.)

“Baba!” (That was Padfoot.)

“Boba!

“I’m telling you, it’s Baba!”

“Babar’s an elephant, you plonker. It might be Booba, but it’s definitely got an “O” in it.”

“You ignoramus. It’s never Booba.”

“Bobo, then.”

Remus set his bag down on the little table with the tea-making supplies. While he was adding milk and sugar, Frank Longbottom sidled up to him. He nodded his heads towards the sofas.

“They’re like an old married couple, aren’t they?”

People had said this before, and it always confused him. The only old married couple Remus knew were his maternal grandparents, who weren’t like James and Sirius at all. They sat quietly in separate armchairs, listened to the wireless together, and occasionally shared a bowl of toffees. They never once threatened to curse off the others genitals and affix them to the parapets.

“Mm,” he nodded at Frank. Then called: “It’s _Biba_ , you idiots.”

“You wot?”

“Biba,” he repeated, coming and sitting down on the squashy sofa next to Sirius. “That expensive branded bag that Lily wanted? You _are_ buying it for her, I suppose.”

“Biba,” James said slowly, at a normal decibel level. “How do you know these things, Moony?”

“She showed you a picture of the bag. It said Biba on it.”

“What does that mean, in Muggle?”

“It— Muggles don’t speak another language, Sirius. It’s a name.” _Isn’t it?_ He wasn’t sure. But he felt that someone had to be the voice of reason in this threesome.

“Moony, you know everything.”

“Yeah, thanks Professor Lupin,” James added. Remus tried very hard not to hit him. That joke had gone on long enough, and they’d even spelled his trunk to read _Professor R. J. Lupin_. If McGonagall found out about that one he’d be in a whirlwind of trouble.

“No I don’t. I just look. With my eyes. And listen, with my ears. You two could try it sometime.”

“Nah.” James got up and swung his bag over his body. “I’ve got important business.”

As he left towards the portrait hole, Sirius threw himself to the floor, clinging to James’ leg. A gaggle of first year girls shrieked with laughter.

“Don’t leave me! Whatever will I do without you?!” James laughed and shook his leg, sending Sirius into a spindly side table, which fell on him.

“Gerroff, you tart. I’m in love with another woman.”

Sirius released James’ leg and broke into mock tears. One of the first years laughed so hard she fell over.

When he eventually sat back down, Remus looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, draining the end of his tea.

“Bat in the cave?” Sirius asked, reaching at his nose.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Look,” Remus said in a low voice, finally snapping. “He and Lily are pretty serious, so you should stop hanging on to him like that.”

“Oh, don’t worry. He knows I’m only joking.”

“Well, it’s not funny.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. You could call Sirius Black a lot of things, but calling him unfunny was like waving a red flag to a bull.

“Those titchies seemed to think it was pretty funny.”

“They’re about as intelligent as you. It was embarrassing, is what it was.”

“Christ, what’s got into you this week? Is it your time of the month?”

This was not the right thing to say.

Remus threw him a nasty look, grabbed his bag and stormed off up to the dormitory, feeling both righteous and foolish. He slammed the door behind him. And then the window, for good measure. Then he stubbed his toe on a commercially-sized vat of custard powder and swore.

It wasn’t near a full moon, but what if it was? That didn’t mean he didn’t have a valid reason to be annoyed. He did have a valid reason. He just… didn’t quite know what it was. James and Sirius were best friends, they were always hanging on to each other. He knew that, and he couldn’t change it. Try as she might, Lily Evans couldn’t change it. He just wished—

Never mind about that. Some wishes were so ridiculous it would bring bad luck just to think of them.

At 10 o’clock, Sirius came up and poked his face through the bedhangings. Remus carried on pretending to read.

“We’re not trying to leave you out, Moony.”

“Mm.”

“Only, you don’t like to clown around.”

“Hm.”

“You know, like impromptu ballroom dancing. Or calling each other ‘darling’. Or dangling each other off the balcony by the ankles. You’re more of a…” Sirius trailed off.

“If you say ‘Professor’, I’ll pull your hair out.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Good.”

Sirius sighed. He stood up and collapsed onto Remus’ bed. Remus bravely tolerated the crushing sensation in both his legs as Sirius sprawled over them.

“I don’t want you to be off with me right before the hols. I only mess around to make you laugh, anyway.”

It wasn’t quite an apology, but it would do. Remus tried valiantly to keep being pissed off, but it was very difficult with Sirius lying there looking up at him with those eyes. Add to that the distraction of enduring a prickling sensation behind his sternum, that made him want to— to grab him, or wrestle him, or magically freeze the moment in time so he could look at Sirius’s face for ever and ever. He breathed deeply and tried to let it pass.

“Go on,” Sirius nudged Remus’ cheek with his socked foot. “Tell me about that book you’re reading. Then I’ll tell you about what I caught Jack Featherly-Whittington doing behind the greenhouses.”

They were still talking at 2 o’clock in the morning, when James threw a shoe at them and told them he’d tape their mouths shut if they didn’t go to bed. So Remus put his head on his pillow, thinking about how he’d never be able to look Jack in the eyes again now that he knew that about him, and began to drift off. Sirius got out of Remus’ bed, then returned a second later as Padfoot. He trod in a circle three times, tail wagging, and then _whumphed_ down at the foot of the bed, snoring within seconds.

* * *

On Thursday, his feelings for Sirius had morphed into something warm and honey-sweet, fuzzy and with a vague air of confusion. He might have been less confused if he hadn’t gone to bed so late, but it couldn’t be helped.

Remus was napping on the best sofa in front of the fire in the common room during a free period when he was rudely awakened by James shoving a vial in his face and ordering him to smell it. In his dozy state he noticed Sirius trying to snatch the vial out of James’ hand, so he was immediately suspicious.

“And what will happen if I do? Can I expect to hear colours or something? Sing uncontrollably like that incident with the bell peppers and the marmalade?”

“Nothing will happen, just— Sirius, fuck off! —just tell me what it smells like,” ordered James.

Remus took the vial and cautiously pulled out the cork. He wasn’t taking NEWT level potions (thank Merlin and Morgana) so he didn’t recognise it. The viscous liquid was candy pink, so he was expecting a sweet smell like raspberries or strawberries. Instead—

“Jesus Christ!” he laughed. “Smells like a…”

“Yes?” James blinked at him expectantly. Sirius stopped biffing James in the chest and stared at him. Remus sniffed the vial again. It shouldn’t have been nice, but it was. It was lovely. He smelled it a few more times, just to be sure.

“Smells like wet dog, but kind of chocolatey. How did you make this?”

James ignored his question and grinned.

“Wet _dog_ , you say?”

“Definitely. Smells just like Padfoot after he’s been rolling around in the mud. Has it got some of your hair in it, or something?” he asked Sirius, who was looking strange all of a sudden, like he’d been hit in the head with a frying pan (and perhaps he had).

James yanked the vial back and looked smug.

“Told you. Told you so,” he said. Sirius hit him again.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Sirius argued, turning red.

“On the contrary, my dear Padfoot. It proves everything.”

“Wet DOG, not wet—“ Sirius broke off and glanced at Remus awkwardly.

Remus watched this exchange without much interest. Sirius and James were always talking nonsense; there weren’t enough hours in the day to try and make sense of it. He would much rather be thinking about the book he had been reading before he fell asleep. It was near the end, but the heroine was still failing to see the obvious, even though it was right in front of her face. _That’s dramatic irony for you_ , he thought.

Though he did remember it later, at dinner.

“What was that about earlier, with that pink potion?”

Sirius dropped the serving spoon and a handful of new potatoes bounced off the table onto the floor. He ducked down to retrieve them, came up a minute later, and held one up to his eye speculatively.

“Five second rule,” James called from down the table. Marlene McKinnon informed him that he was disgusting.

“I dunno,” said Sirius, flicking off a bit of dirt, “How often do the elves wash this floor, d’you think?”

“No idea. Padfoot?”

“Mm?”

“Why did James make me smell that potion earlier?”

“Oh,” Sirius mumbled, waving an arm lazily and almost hitting Jemima Jones in the face. She glared at him and moved further along the bench. “He thought it would smell like one thing, I thought it would smell like another. We probably didn’t brew it properly, at any rate.”

“What was it supposed to smell like?”

“I dunno. Books?”

“Why books?”

“You love books, don’t you Moony?”

“I like _reading._ I don’t go around sniffing books.”

This was not true. There was nothing better than the smell of old, leather-bound books, in Remus’ opinion. Putting his nose deep between the pages of a large tome brought a certain kind of tingling excitement that Remus wasn’t sure was healthy.

Anyway, he was none the wiser after that exchange, he thought, giving up and reaching for the trifle.

* * *

Friday was when it all went wrong.

They were having an end-of-term Christmas party in the Gryffindor common room, and the noise was so extreme the Slytherins could probably hear it down in the dungeons. There were paper chains and ivy and loose chocolate frogs hopping around. There had even been enchanted mistletoe, but Longbottom had stolen it all to try and trap that round-faced girl he had fancied since third year.

Remus had wandered over to the punch table to escape Sirius’s terrible jokes. Sadly, he could still hear them.

“What about this one? I was walking down the street, when I came across a young woman.” The circle of students around him leaned in closer. “…And then I pulled my trousers up.”

“Oh, that’s awful!” they chorused.

“I don’t get it,” complained Dorcas Meadowes, who was a sweet thing.

“Believe me, you don’t want to know,” her friend said from beside her. Sirius grinned like a Cheshire cat, rubbed his palms together and adjusted his striped hat, which had fallen at a jaunty angle.

“How about this,” he said, “Two nuns were walking by when a man in a trenchcoat ran up and flashed them.” Some of the girls giggled and tipped back their drinks. Sirius waited until all eyes were on him before he delivered the punchline. “One of the nuns had a stroke. The other couldn’t reach!”

“That’s terrible!” wailed Dorcas. “Strokes are a Muggle disease, aren’t they?”

Remus snorted and turned back to the punch bowl, ladling some out. There was something green and wiggling in the bottom; it was best not to look too closely.

Lily bounded up to him, wearing tinsel like a feather boa and a sprig of holly in her red hair.

“Hiya! Excited about Saturday?” she asked, taking the ladle from him.

“I’m looking forward to going home for the holidays. Unless you mean whatever prank those two are planning— I suppose you know what it is?”

“Know?” she laughed. “Lupin, I’m the engineer. I’m the true mastermind. Those two can barely tie their shoelaces, they need me if they want to execute brilliance.”

Women were scary sometimes.

“And it’s got something to do with that potion, I’m guessing?”

“What potion?” She grabbed his arm and looked at him unblinkingly. “James never said anything about a potion.”

“Er,” he said, trying to pull his arm back and finding her grip surprisingly strong. “I don’t know, the pink one. The one that smells like Sirius, you know.”

She frowned, and he could see the cogs working in her brain. She was tops at Potions, so she must know it. Apparently Slughorn was all but ready to adopt her. Suddenly, she gasped.

“Smells like— oh, Lupin,” she said softly, dropping his arm. “We were brewing Amortentia this week. Are you sure it wasn’t that?”

“Amor-what?” he asked, rubbing at his wrist.

“The love potion. It smells like the things you love most. For me it was— well, never mind. Are you alright?”

He wasn’t alright. The world was tilting on its axis, and it wasn’t just down to the dodgy punch. Love potion? The things he loved most? Of course, he knew it deep down, but he’d never had to face the evidence quite so plainly before.

They’d made him smell it, and he had said… and Sirius had been there, too. _Told you so_ , James had said. So they both knew. He could feel his face turning red.

He downed another glass of punch. And then a third. And then he pushed through the throng up to the dormitory, just in time to see Sirius throw himself at James, another one of their lovesick couple routines. They rolled around on the floor, dramatically clutching at each other, kissing while the crowd cheered and wolf-whistled.

It wasn’t funny this time. It was painful. They were clearly doing it to rub it in his face — to tell him this kind of thing could only ever be a joke.

He hurried clumsily up the circular stairs, grazing his elbows on the stone wall. He didn’t think this evening could get worse, until he saw it.

His bed. It was covered in eyes.

He shouted, swore, and heard someone stumbling up the stairs.

“What have you done?!” he yelled.

“Calm down,” said James, who should have known that the one thing you should never say to an angry person is ‘calm down’. “It was a simple mistake, we ordered the wrong ingredients. I told Frank to get us a disguise, not eel eyes.”

“And what’s a bucketload of fucking eel eyes doing on my bed?” he shouted, feeling a punch-induced headache thumping behind his eyes. He could vanish them, but he couldn’t clean eel gunk off the sheets — the house elves had charmed the beds against magic, after that unfortunate fiasco with the fire and the vodka and the ritualistic chanting.

“Hey! What’s the problem? You can share with Sirius,” he suggested. Remus snarled at him.

“Fuck off. Just fuck off. I’ll sleep in the Shack.”

He bent down, stuffing clothes and random things into a bag.

“You hate the Shack,” James pointed out, as Sirius appeared sans hat and, for some reason, sans shirt.

“I also hate finding two hundred eel eyes in my bed!”

“We’re sorry, Moony, it was an accident. Come on, don’t go. You can sleep in Pete’s bed,” Sirius said reasonably. Remus paused.

He hadn’t thought of that. He eyed up Peter’s bed, considering what secretions were likely to be in it.

“I’ll take the Shack,” he decided, and left.

Bugger it all. The Shrieking Shack was cold as all fuck in December.

Remus curled under the sheets and cursed the universe. What was James thinking? Telling him to share with Sirius — trying to make a fool out of him. What a class-A prick. What a tosser.

Thank Circe he could take the train home tomorrow evening. He might have to find a compartment by himself, though. Or sit with the bores in the Prefect’s carriage. That was a problem for tomorrow, he thought grumpily. The only thing to do now was sleep off that disgusting punch and wallow.

* * *

He dreamed of Sirius. He always had dreams about Sirius when he was in the Shack. Sirius running, Sirius laughing. And once, a strange dream about Sirius playing Greensleeves on an omnichord and crushing grapes with his feet. There was no explaining that one.

When he woke in the early hours of the morning, Sirius was there, next to him in the bed. Soft dawn light shone through the moth eaten curtains and danced across his hair, turning the dark strands gold.

“I think there’s been a hilarious misunderstanding,” he said. “We’ll laugh about it later.”

“Ha ha,” Remus croaked, and rolled over, taking the thin duvet with him. “Bugger off.”

“Moony,” Sirius whined, climbing on top of him. Remus tried to push him away but it was like trying to do karate with an octopus. He ended up flat on his back with Sirius sitting on his waist, weighing him down. Sirius put his hands on either side of Remus’ face and even put his thumbs over his mouth to stop him talking. Remus was contemplating biting them.

“I spoke to Lily. I didn’t— ow, stop it— I wasn’t kissing James last night, you plonker. You’ve got the wrong idea.” And then he bent down, till they were nose to nose.

He momentarily stopped breathing. And stopped thinking. It wasn’t inaccurate to say that his heart skipped a beat.

He was sure that Sirius was going to kiss him, but instead Sirius tilted his head and kissed his own thumb, over Remus’s mouth.

“See? Like how actors do it on stage. We only pretend to be madly in love with each other. You must know I would never— not with James. I’ve got better taste than that.”

“Have you? What did that pink potion smell like to you?” Remus asked quietly. Sirius hesitated.

“It smelled like… Imperious leather.”

“Leather?”

“No, that— that Muggle soap you use.”

Remus laughed so hard Sirius fell off him and landed beside him, bouncing on the springy mattress.

“ _Imperial_ leather, you madman. I’m surprised you recognise what soap smells like.”

“I do love you, Moony.”

Remus felt it then, in every cell of his body. Hot, and thrilling, and overwhelming. He kissed Sirius deeply, properly this time, and poured all his love into it.

They were getting wonderfully carried away when an explosion like a jet plane backfiring made Remus jump.

“Don’t worry, that’ll be the fireworks,” Sirius yawned.

Remus walked over to the window, bringing the duvet with him to protect his modesty. True enough, there were fireworks bursting over the castle, visible even in the morning light. He could hear faint screams in the distance.

“Oh my God, what happened to the lake? It’s turned… yellow…”

“Don’t worry, that’ll be the custard,” Sirius explained.

“What about the underwear?”

“Er, it’s on the floor, I think.”

“No, I mean, James said something about underwear.”

“Oh, right. Can you see the flagpole at all?”

“Hogwarts doesn’t have a flagpole, Pads.”

“Look again.”

Remus looked. Sure enough, between the clock tower and the Astronomy tower there was a pole, but rather than a flag flying from it it looked like a pair of tartan…

“No. You didn’t. You couldn’t have! McGonagall’s knickers, are you out of your mind? How— Why—”

Sirius wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and grabbed a paper crane as it flew through the window. He unfolded it and read the letter.

“It’s from Lily. She says we’ve got to show our faces soon if we want an alibi.” He Vanished it and began pulling his trousers back on. “She was a great help, you know. We’d never have thought about the pigs by ourselves.”

He was mad. Absolutely barking.

“See, we labelled them 1, 2, and 4, so McGonagall and Dumbledore will drive themselves barmy looking for number 3,” he explained as they crossed the frosty lawn back to the castle.

“And what are you going to do about the eel eyes?” Remus asked.

Sirius hummed apologetically.

“Send them to Pete, can’t we? Doesn’t eating eel eyes cure spattergroit?”

“Standing in a barrel of them, you mean.”

“No, eating them.”

“No, standing in them.”

“No—“

“Is this what being with you is like?” Remus interrupted. “Constant bickering?”

“Yep,” Sirius grinned. “You’d better get used to it.”

“You’re barking, Sirius Black.”

“You love me really.”

“Oh,” said Remus, as he watched several of the staff chasing pigs into the Great Hall. “Definitely.”

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This was conceptualised and written while listening to ‘Lost in the Woods’ from the Frozen II soundtrack. I like to think of one of the Marauders roaming about the Forbidden Forest having an existential crisis (while 80's riffs play in the background).


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